Presence management refers to the task of identifying whether a given user is available to receive a communication. The concept originated, at least in part, in instant messaging products such as those provided by AOL, Yahoo and MSN. In a typical scenario, a user's availability or presence is registered into an application-specific database in response to the user logging in to a particular software application. When other users wish to contact the user, the availability is obtained from the database using an application-specific protocol. In these scenarios, presence management is tied to particular software applications (e.g. AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and instant messaging products). The applications establish presence, with some user control, when the user logs in to an application. This method limits the information to the particular applications, and is not usable from outside the application for which it was designed.
In today's applications, presence management usually requires an effort on the user's part. Normally, the user creates a profile to regulate presence management and to keep it current. Moreover, he or she must log into a device to initiate presence management monitoring. Finally, presence management is dependent upon a software application and/or device to which it is linked.